Citizens Awareness Network Executive Director Deb Katz says she has a pretty good idea what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will say Tuesday night when it addresses concerns over the Pilgrim Station Nuclear Power Plant.

Emily Clark eclark@wickedlocal.com @emilyOCM

PLYMOUTH – Citizens Awareness Network Executive Director Deb Katz says she has a pretty good idea what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will say Tuesday night when it addresses concerns over the Pilgrim Station Nuclear Power Plant.

Avoiding the elephant in the room – that leaked NRC email that identifies a myriad of safety issues at the plant – will be the agenda, she added.

NRC Special Inspector Don Jackson identified Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station as having a “safety culture problem a bunch of talking won’t fix” in a December email to fellow NRC inspectors and workers – an email that was not supposed to be read by the public.

Jackson emailed a co-worker who accidentally included Cape Downwinder member Diane Turco in a forwarded email blast, thereby sparking a firestorm of concern from residents, nuclear watchdog groups, local legislators and Gov. Charlie Baker who all read it.

In the hot seat now, the NRC acquiesced to a public meeting Tuesday night in Plymouth to discuss preliminary findings of its inspection of the plant, completed earlier this month. The email leak occurred during this inspection. The OCM will post its story from that meeting on Wicked Local Plymouth.

Nuclear engineer David Lochbaum, director of the Nuclear Safety Project for the Union of Concerned Scientists, addressed a crowd of approximately 50 concerned citizens Monday night at Plymouth’s Council on Aging. He noted that the NRC itself rates Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station among the three worst performers in the country, and all of these plants are owned Entergy Corp.

Pilgrim is, in fact, one step above shutdown status. It is scheduled by Entergy to shut down in May 2019.

Lochbaum noted that Jackson’s email doesn’t just broadly question Pilgrim’s operations; there are many specific and technical errors Jackson identifies. For instance, the email references serious problems with the residual heat removal system, one of the most important safety systems at Pilgrim, Lochbaum said. Among many other concerns, Jackson writes that water leakage should not be occurring outside of the drywell, and that that has not been appropriately evaluated. In the email, Jackson identifies illegal repairs to this system, Lochbaum said.

“If ignorance is bliss, Pilgrim needs a bliss reduction program,” Lochbaum said. “The numerous illegal, non-code repairs have not stopped, or even slowed, the leak. Entergy has not properly evaluated the recurring leakage. If two wrongs don’t make a right, Entergy must stop searching for how many wrongs it does take.”

Lochbaum went on to note that the email is unequivocal in identifying that Pilgrim has repeatedly violated federal safety regulations.

Meanwhile, the NRC has issues of its own, according to Lochbaum. While the company properly downgraded Pilgrim’s status in spite of political and corporate pressure, surveys of the agency are turning up concerning facts.

A 2015 NRC Office of the Inspector General survey indicates that only 47 percent of the NRC staff felt they could disagree with NRC management without “adverse repercussions,” Lochbaum said. He noted that 75 percent of those given the survey responded to it.

“Only 51 percent of the NRC staff responding to the 2015 NRC Office of the Inspector General survey felt the NRC had the proper focus on quality results,” he added. “The NRC staff’s responses to annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Surveys reveal a large and growing faction who feel they will be retaliated against for disclosing a suspected violation.”

Katz said the NRC and Entergy are both influenced by money. She said Entergy simply doesn’t have the money or want to spend it to fix all the many issues at the aging plant, particularly since it is slated to close in 2019. She said the NRC and Entergy are literally gambling here – hoping that nothing serious happens in that time frame.

“What the NRC is doing is choosing to protect this corporation rather than protecting the health and safety of the commonwealth,” Katz said. “Entergy is gambling and the NRC is gambling, but they’re gambling with our lives.”

Lochbaum said that, in spite of all the many issues at the plant, he doesn’t anticipate the NRC will downgrade it to mandatory shutdown status. However, he said, given the number of problems and their seriousness, he doubts the NRC would upgrade the plant.

That’s not acceptable to opponents who say the 44-year-old plant is a clear and present danger and needs to be shut down immediately. They say the NRC has acknowledged how serious the situation is in the leaked email.

“How many of you have 43-year-old appliances operating in your house?” Pilgrim Watch Director Mary Lampert asked. “There have been 18 failures in 2016. They wait until it breaks, then they fix it.”

It remains to be seen how the NRC will address concerns about the email Tuesday night. One thing remains certain, however. Watchdog groups won’t be happy until the plant closes and the issue of the stored radioactive fuel on the site is addressed.

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